Page 8 of The Wallflower and the Running Back

“You forgot running,” Logan says, bringing my attention back to him.

I scrunch my face and pull in my brow.

“Throwing, catching . . . and running.”

He scoots his chair back, returning the space that existed between us before Dalton showed up. My pulse still hasn’t slowed, but the air suddenly feels about ten degrees cooler.

“I take it you’re good at the running part?”

He’s pulled my notepad close and is drawing endless circles in the margin. His mouth tugs up a half second before his eyes flit up to me, and I’m instantly reminded of all the reasons I dreaded taking on this assignment .

“I’m good at a lot of things, Shortcake.”

4/

logan

I’m not sure who that guy was, but he’s a dick. Dalton, I think? I forgot his name the second he uttered it. All I know is he made Rachel uncomfortable. She didn’t even scold me for calling her Shortcake again, which I did as a distraction. I may also like how her face scrunches when she gets mad. It’s cute. She’s cute. Too cute for Dalton the dick. That’s for sure.

He walked out of here five minutes ago and Rachel has been distracted ever since, constantly checking the main doors behind her and manically flipping her phone over to check the screen.

“I assume he’s an ex?” I scoot into the table and lean forward, my head to one side as I try to force her to look me in the eyes. When she does, it’s brief. And while Dalton might be an asshole, I sense by the slight flinch I note when our gazes meet that the hurt he left behind is still very much an open wound.

I lick my lips and fold my hands together, looking down at the table.

“Let me guess,” I say.

“Don’t,” she responds.

I chew at the inside of my cheek and ignore my inner voice, which is currently egging me to needle her about it just a little. Not to tease her or anything. I simply want to know. I’m not sure why, but I do.

“Okay.” I nod and pull the chemistry book close again, reading over the same portion we reviewed a minute ago. Reading it now, it’s as if someone gave me an answer key. What read like gibberish yesterday suddenly makes a whole lot of sense.

“You know, I never understood what that meant—significant figure. I don’t know that my professor last year explained it really. He expected us, well, me at least, to just know what it meant. But how am I supposed to know?” I write out a few of the number examples and chuckle at how obvious it seems.

“I always thought they should call them obvious numbers. Makes more sense that it’s a number I’m certain is right rather than a measurement I’m guessing at,” Rachel says, breaking down the definition the way she has everything we’ve worked on today. I knew she was the one I needed.

I glance her way and our eyes meet for a second. Her mouth ticks up on one side, the swell of her cheek lifting her glasses up a hair on one side of her face. It’s cute. She has a lot of cute habits. Like the way she stacks her feet under the table, heel balancing on toe. Or sometimes, she folds herself up in her seat and rests her elbows on her knees. I would kill for that flexibility. It also makes me think about her flexibility. And that wakes up other thoughts.

I shake my head to clear it and refocus on the fact Dalton the dick just left her feeling pretty shitty. She can do better.

“I was dating this girl, Amy, for, well, for way too long, honestly. And she would do this thing whenever we were out with friends or in front of others.”

Rachel turns in her seat, resting her right arm on the table. Her eyes haze, suspicious, so I keep talking.

“You know those people who have to constantly point out when you say something wrong? Like, maybe it’s using the word irregardless?—”

“It’s regardless,” Rachel interjects. I sigh but when she winks at me, I get her joke.

“Funny, but also . . . not funny. And I know it’s regardless. That was the example. It could be anything really. Like mispronouncing an actor’s name, or getting the city wrong when recanting some travel story, or mentally flipping a word and saying the wrong thing. Freudian slip and all that.”

Her brow is pulled in tight, and I realize Freudian might not have been the right term, though maybe me saying it in front of her is its own Freudian slip. Her slight nod tells me she’s following me so far. Phew.

“Well, Amy, my ex, she would do that to me all the time. If I said San Diego instead of San Francisco, she would point it out and then laugh about how I mixed things up all the time. Even if it had zero bearing on the story. Or if I was giving an example that she didn’t think was good enough, she would immediately butt in and improve it, making sure to tell everyone that she always has to do that for me.”

“That’s . . . annoying,” Rachel says, her lips curling into a tiny sneer. She gets it.

“Right? It was so annoying. And it always made me feel stupid, sometimes in front of people I really wanted to impress.” I glance down briefly and mentally riffle through the dozens of examples that really left a mark. She corrected me in front of my coach at least twice I can think of, and once in front of an NFL scout.

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